A satellite communication system generally includes an antenna that must be aligned with a geo-synchronous satellite. One such system, known as a Ku/Ka band system, generally transmits at the Ka band and receives at the Ku band. Typically, the antenna is coarsely pointed at the selected satellite after which an installation technician manually adjusts the antenna position by determining the peak Ku band signal by moving the antenna in azimuth and elevation. However, when the antenna is aligned with the satellite using the Ku band signal, the antenna may not be aligned with sufficient accuracy to achieve optimal Ka band transmission performance. This misalignment with the satellite can occur since the Ku bandwidth is much broader than the Ka bandwidth. In addition, changing atmospheric conditions can further impair a marginal alignment.
Typically, after aligning the antenna using the Ku band signal, the technician must contact a remote station to request an evaluation of the antenna's Ka band transmission characteristics. The alignment process continues in this way until the Ka band transmission is optimized to the extent possible using such a manual process. It will be appreciated that the foregoing is a time-consuming and expensive process.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a Ku/Ka band satellite communication system that automatically aligns an antenna with a geo-synchronous satellite with sufficient accuracy for optimal Ku band and Ka band performance.